Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

In Hoynacki v. Hoynacki, No. E2015-02084-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 31, 2016), the Court of Appeals overturned summary judgment in a case about whether a dad had a duty to hold or stabilize a ladder for his son.

Defendant father owned an RV, and while he was camping in North Carolina near where his son lived, he called his son and asked him to help wax the RV. The two spent Saturday and Sunday waxing the RV. “When the RV’s height required the use of a ladder, plaintiff got on it to wax the top parts, and defendant stayed on the ground to stabilize and secure the ladder.” On their second day of work, plaintiff was on the ladder waxing the front part of the RV above the windshield. The ground where the ladder was sitting sloped away from the RV such that one side of the ladder was lower than the other. Defendant placed the ladder in this position, and then walked to the other side of the RV while plaintiff was working. When plaintiff began to come down the ladder, the ladder fell and plaintiff was seriously injured.

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In Thompson v. Best Buy Stores, L.P., No. E2015-02304-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 28, 2016), the Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling that an employer had no duty to prevent an employee from leaving the premises in his own car.

Plaintiff was an employee at a Best Buy store (“defendant”). Before work one day, plaintiff received a package in the mail containing “a chemical cousin of valium,” which he had ordered off the internet. Plaintiff testified that he took three drops of the substance before reporting to work that day, and that “he remembers clocking in, but after that, he has no memory of anything else that happened that day.”

During work, one of plaintiff’s co-workers told the assistant sales manager on duty that “plaintiff was acting slow, tired and not very responsive.” The manager made the decision that plaintiff should not operate a piece of heavy machinery in the store warehouse, and he eventually told plaintiff to clock out and end his shift early. The manager noted at trial that no one at the store mentioned or suspected that plaintiff was on any drugs. He also stated that he did not tell plaintiff he had to go home or leave the premises, but simply to clock out. After plaintiff clocked out, he apparently got into his car to head home and was in a car accident, wherein his car hit a median wall then bounced into a pickup truck, totaling both vehicles.

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Lawyer Paul Newton of Gulfport, Mississippi filed a lawsuit against Popeye’s for not supplying him with a knife in his take-out chicken bag.  He says the lack of a knife (he did receive a spork) caused him to use his teeth to tear the chicken from the bone when he was consuming it back at his office.   According to the complaint, he choked on a piece of chicken.

Newton later dismissed the case, reportedly because of “extreme comments directed to me and my family.”

Newton’s unclaimed Avvo profile indicates that he has been practicing law for 35 years.

Earlier today I received this email from a law firm:

I was looking at your website and noticed that you handle product liability cases. We (XXXXXX) are a co-counsel/case acquisition firm. There may be some synergy between our two firms worth exploring. I have some time Thursday or Friday for a brief chat. Let me know your thoughts.

(Emphasis added.)

In a 40-plus page opinion that reads like a prince-handing-out-gold email scam, the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed a trial court’s judgment that a plaintiff had not proven intentional misrepresentation because his reliance on the statements made could not possibly have been reasonable.

In Estate of Lambert v. Fitzgerald, No. E2015-00905-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. April 28, 2016), plaintiff had known defendant attorney for over forty years. Defendant somehow became involved with an “investment” scheme wherein he was promised astronomical returns on his money. Defendant was giving large sums of cash to a “diplomat” in London, who had obtained possession of six crates containing a total of $150,000,000 in U.S. currency from a man in South Africa. The money, though, allegedly had to be washed and go through various other procedures to be released. Upon its release, defendant said he had been promised $25,000,000. At some point, defendant got plaintiff involved with the promise that plaintiff too would receive $25,000,000, and plaintiff began writing large checks to defendant when asked to do so for the investment. The head of this investment scheme, Brindley, kept giving reasons it failed to close when promised—an additional license was needed, the money had to be moved to a mint in Scotland, he had to get an anti-terrorism certificate from the government—and asking for more money to help accomplish the eventual release of the cash. All information plaintiff received about the investment came from defendant, and plaintiff only spoke to Brindley two times on the phone. Even after multiple promised payout dates fell through, plaintiff continued to give more money to the scheme. Plaintiff ultimately “invested” more than $500,000 in the scheme through defendant, and defendant alleged that he invested $517,000 of his own money as well.

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Day on Torts:  Leading Cases in Tennessee Tort Law is in its third edition, and now that edition is being supplemented with a 300+ page volume.

The 650+ page  third edition of the book contains a ready reference to hundreds of leading Tennessee tort cases, organized by subject.  The 2016 supplement adds eight new chapters, 91 new sections, and over 160 new cases.   Some cases which I previously designated as “leading cases” have been supplanted by other, more recent decisions.

I compiled the cases for this book to give Tennessee tort lawyers and judges an easy way to find the leading case on any particular tort law subject, giving them a starting place for more in depth research.